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Dessert

Marmelade of Apricots

A sweet preserve made by cooking apricots with sugar and water until it thickens.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,630 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Marmelade of Apricots

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the skins and stones from the apricots and cut them into pieces.

  2. Weigh the apricots.

  3. Measure ¾ pound of sugar for each pound of fruit.

Make the syrup

  1. Melt the sugar in a kettle with 2 cups of water for each pound of sugar over low heat.

  2. Boil the sugar mixture for 30 minutes.

Cook the marmalade

  1. Add the apricots to the boiling mixture.

  2. Continue boiling for 1 to 1.5 hours, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  3. Check if the marmalade is done by taking a small amount and pressing it with your thumb; it should form a string when removed.

  4. Remove the marmalade from heat.

Pot and cool

  1. Pour the marmalade into pots.

  2. Add cracked apricot stones to the pots if desired.

  3. Let the marmalade cool completely before covering the pots.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apricots
Provide the fruit flavor and natural pectin that helps the marmalade thicken and set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, helps preserve the fruit, and thickens the marmalade as water evaporates.

The step that matters

Testing for doneness. Cooking drives off water and concentrates the sugar and pectin. Stopping too early leaves the marmalade runny, while cooking too long can make it stiff and prone to scorching, so the thumb test matters.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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